Guide to "Master prospector" & related hard achievements

This guide will help you towards getting the "Master Prospector" achievement.
In doing so, we will also be getting other achievements as the requirement for prospector is a combination of those.

Introduction

This guide contains spoilers!!


The description for the master prospector achievement says we need "all 4 gold stars in the same playthrough".
The stars are given based on your performance in four fields;

• Speed (gold requires beating the game in less than 2 hours and 30 minutes)
  
• Money (gold requires aquiring 20,000$ or more)
  
• Orbs (gold requires collecting 150 blue orbs or more)
  
• Deaths (gold requires 0 deaths)

As you can tell, this a hard and rare achievement. The main concern is collecting everything in less then two and a half ours. Doing that separately is not a big challenge, but it's the combination that makes "Master Prospector" hard.

Now, for each separate category there is also a separate achievement, so you will probably be getting more than one achievement. This is a fun challenge that you can take upon yourself.

I personally did it in just over two hours, so thankfully there is some margin for error here.

Preparations and what makes this possible?

1. First of all - Beat the game once.
   
2. Secondly - Have knowledge of the secrets, try getting the "It's a secret of everybody" achievement before attempting this.
   
3. Third - Know that this is not doable on your first try, there will be some resets/starting over from scratch before you get the hang of what do to.

How do I do this fast?

There is a route that's all about reaching the Old world and Vectron quickly since most of the ore in archea is worthless. This guide will tell out about that way.

The part about doing things quickly is to skip past all dialogue and avoid pointless upgrades and dig straight to the next mandatory part of the game. In doing so we will often ignore what the objective says, such as talking with townspeople and not following the red objective pointer.

The walljump sequence break
As for more specific things you will need to do there is a narrow walljump trick that allow us to reach certain areas before you're supposed to reach them in an average playhrough. This trick might have been intended by the developer, or they've been made aware of it since release, because doing this in two different caves will result in an achievement.

Here is the short gif to demonstrate
http://gfycat.com/GaseousMadeupHarrier
This is hard to pull off. The window to reach the upper square is very small.

Here is the same gif but slower, press the play button below the gif to start it.
http://gfycat.com/GaseousMadeupHarrier#?frameNum=221&speed=0.25

I've found that doing it with a small mini jump (tap the jump button) before I go into the big jump (hold jump button) really helps. The momentum you build with the little jump makes it so there's no problem with your vertical height.

What you generally do is stay on the wall; holding forward against it and doing small jumps to keep your height.
Then you do a full jump, change your direction out from the wall so that you won't hit your head against the ceiling of the overhang - you will then need to change your horizontial direction back and as you come in contact with the edge jump again immediately to climb. You cannot be that far out, the moment you reach the vertical height enough to touch the edge is when you need to be turning around to meet it. If you didn't hit the ceiling, but still didn't get up, you either jumped from a too low point or didn't change your direction soon enough.




Here's what it looks like the moment you connect to the edge. As you can see it's at the very bottom of how far down you can be while still touching it.


I really don't know how else to describe how to do this jump, you just need to get a feeling for it yourself - I've decided to include these videos, I suppose my gif and desciption wasn't enough to help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp2HQg82OHg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPFuFosef64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zruXR01PRpU#t=191 (for the third video, the first skip happens 3 minutes in)
Videos belong to their respecive owners :)

It's also possible to jump up a without the mini-jump first but it's even harder. Now, go into an old save and try this anywhere that there is an overhang like in the gif. Once you think you've learned how to do it, keep reading.

Now, if you don't want to do this trick, thinking it's too hard, keep in mind it will cost you a lot of time. It's probably possible to do this challenge without the trick, but you will be giving yourself less time for later digging.

If you want to do it without walljumping, you can also use some dynamite to do the jump, but it costs alot of health and is very risky.

If doing it without the sequence break all together, you will have to remember to go back later and destory the generators at some point after getting the double jump. The rooms are Archea Cave 1 and Old World Cave 2. It would simply be a faster playthrough where you have to mine some of the early worthless early ore. Follow the guide but skip the parts when I ask you to do the walljump trick.

How do I get all the gold?

In order to get 20,000 you will have to clean out pretty much the whole Vectron. The ore there is the most valuable, so we will focus our mining there. After that it's time to backtrack to Old World and get the rest of the money there. A lot of treasure is in the secret caves, so we will also be getting from those.
While visiting the trade, we can see how much money accumulated so keeping track on how much more we need is easy.

How do I get all the blue orbs?

The secondary currency does not get more valuable as we go deeper, thus we can collect these as we descend. The game has random elements so the locations of ore/orbs are never the same. While digging, keep an eye out for the blue orb "bombs" and get them.
In Archea, we will enter every cave and get the orbs and secrets.
In Old world we will skip the optional caves (to come back later), but still keep an eye out for the orb bombs outside of caves.
In Vectron, we will do the same, skip optional caves (for later) and grab any orbs on the field.

The problem with this is we can never see how many orbs that's been spent, so this is why I need you to know beforehand of where the secrets are. Since a lot of the orbs are there, you will need to get a lot of the secrets. I will mention some locations but refer to the secrets guide by "Hyrulfyr" if you need help with that.

How do I not die?

Be wary of bombs, avoid spikes and enemies. Don't get crushed by falling blocks.

The one trick to this is that IF you die, you can Alt+F4 out of the "you died" screen and the game won't have saved the fact that you died.
Sure, this means you will have to redo some work, but better than starting over completely.
I still restarted a buch of times, but once you're in Old World you should go over to the Alt+F4 trick instead.

Have a video to show how fast this can be done?

I got started with this challenge by watching this speedrun.
Most of the early strategies are coming from this video so cretids to the Steamworld Dig speedrunning community! I don't take credit for the beginning of the route or the walljump trick, although I don't know if I'm the first to know about the mini boost jump that help making the walljump easier.

The speedrun can be great to watch when trying to follow my main guide. It will differ however as we will collect orbs/ore, and we won't do the ladder trick.

The runthrough itself - Part 1

I recommend using some sort of timer on your mobile to keep track of the time.
You can also use google, by typing in "timer" and then setting it to 2h 30m.

Since you will have to look at this guide, I recommend playing Steamworld Dig in windowed, putting the game in one corner of the screen and this guide in the other - allowing for easy reference. I have tested and unfocusing the game (clicking/alt-tabbing away to something else like your browser) will pause it and the ingame timer doesn't seem to go up when the game is frozen like that. Do this as often as you'd like.

You can do one "test" playthrough first where you don't rush it, just so you will know what to do and where.

I will be referring "instance caves" as simply caves. If the cave has a sign with a roman number I will call it "Cave 2". If a cave or teleporter usually appears at a certain depth I will mention that.

There are placeable teleporters as well, these help with preventing having to jump back up to sell. Since the randomness of the game makes it hard to predict when to use one, it will have to be your own judgement when to use one. Make sure you always have one though.

Tutorial and Archea

Remember to mash through all text!

• Walk left, get the pickaxe
  
• Go back right, don't talk to the robot
  
• Dig down, pull the lever
  
• Jump up

• (Optional) Go up to recharge your light
  
• Dig ore, get 8$
  
• Sell and level up
  
• Get the sharp pickaxe upgrade
  
• Dig, find Cave 1
  
• Go right, get running boots upgrade
  
• Go left and up

Reach this spot: (look at the minimap if you can't tell where in Cave 1 this is)


Do the thing (Jump up into the secret generator room)[gfycat.com]


Get the 4 dark matter, and the orb secret to the right

• Go back up and sell
  
• Buy chopper pickaxe (no other axe upgrades)
  
• Keep digging, enter any unnumbered cave and get it's treasure
  
• Find teleporter (80m), use it and sell if needed

Remember to get any of the blue orbs you spot!

• Dig, find Cave 2 (90m)
  
• Get steam jump upgrade

Don't miss the "avenyrine" on your way out.

• Find the teleporter if you haven't already and sell
  
• Dig, enter next cave get loot (100m)
  
• Dig, enter next cave get loot (140m)
  This loot is for reaching level 6, needed for unlocking water tank upgrade
  
• Enter Cave 3 get stuff and drill upgrade (150m)

Another secret ore you should pickup while getting the drill. Exit Cave 3 with atleast one bar of water.

• Use drill down to enter Old world
  
• Go back up through steampipe
  
• Sell/buy. Makes sure you get a third tank as it's needed
  Health upgrades are also really useful!
  
• Also get one teleport
  
• Go from the top ladder into Archea Cave 1

Do the thing again[gfycat.com]



Use the drill to get the diamond!

• While inside, fill your water bar if it's not already full
  
• Steam-jump up
  This next part is tricky, stand near the edge when jumping
  If you fail, refill. Go out and back in if you run out of water
  
• Another fully charged jump to get past the lasers
  
• Wall jump up, let the target laser destroy the maggots or deal with them yourself
  
• Use your last waterbar to destroy the tile blocking the red jukebox

Don't forget secrets like this one! Prevents backtracking!


Destroy the generator! (Don't the red things look like jukeboxes to you?)

• Go back to surface,
  
• Sell/buy upgrade drill get a teleporter if you used the other one
  One or two pouch upgrades should be gotten too

The runthrough itself - Part 2

Old World and Vectron

• Use steampipe down
  Collect easy value stuff from now on
  
• Ignore entrances! (We will come back here later without it wasting time)
  If you need a quick heal, follow the red spot and look for Cave 1. The upgrade here is dynamite which is mostly useless, you don't need to go into this cave at all
  
• Dig and enter Cave 2 (340m)

Use walljump here, this time it's a smaller shortcut.

• Go up again above the beerthrower
  
• Then go left, follow the path and get steampunch upgrade
  
• Jump left and dig out the ore next to the Half-life 3 corpses
  
• Leave, keep digging down
  
• Get to Cave 3 (420m)

Put up teleporter outside and go sell.

• Inside, be careful not loosing too much health
  
• Go the right and get the fall dampener upgrade

Another secret you can might as well grab!


Go to the big opening near the exit of the cave, and walljump up!


Get the ore here!

• Then jump to the left, use the steampunch on the boxes
  
• Get the orbs that you're standing on
  
• Enter the door
  
• There are two secrets in here, one on your immediate right, on the the left
  
• After collecting them, go down, use the steampunch on the beerthrower
  
• Jump across and get on safe ground

Here is the last place you will need the walljump trick


Get up there, then go down around


Destroy the generator. You should get an achievement now for that

• Go out, use teleporter and sell
  
• About now you should be level 8, unlocking Biff's shop.
  
• Get Drill/HP/Tank upgrades from him
  Remember to always have one teleporter with you!!

• Dig, collect ore and get to Velcron
  
• Enter Velcron go back using steampipe, sell
  
• Go back down and dig
  Remember to collect nearby ore!

• Enter Cave 1
  
• Get mineral detector upgrade
  From now on when inside a room, try to collect all the secrets
  
• Destroy generator blocking
  
• Dig, enter Cave 2, get double jump upgrade and destroy generator
  
• Keep ascending, careful of lasers
  
• Next enter the non number entrance, destroy generator
  
• Find the next fixed teleporter, fill your pouch then go back and sell
  At this point buy anything you want

• Mine everything in Vectron. EVERYTHING
  This is the part when you ransack the whole anicent city and it's treasures
  Look at your timer, see how much time you have for mining
  
• If you didn't do the walljumping trick, you can now go back to enter Archea Cave 1 and Old World Cave 3, where you destroy the two remaining generators. Don't forget to mine too.
  
• Enter every instance and make sure you have gotten the secrets there
  
• Once Vectron is cleared, teleport up, go to Old World via steampipe
  
• Work your way down, entering every instance and checking if you have cleared the secrets
  
• Keep digging until you have 20,000 gold and be on the lookout for orbs!

When trying to determine how many more orbs you need, try to buy as many things that cost orbs.
When I had 157 total collected, the upgrades I hadn't bought cost 25 orbs in total when added together. Try reaching that or less. Keep in mind I had also bought about four teleporters.

Enter final boss room and beat it. Steampunch is the best weapon here.

If you have (hopefully) collected enough orbs, and have followed all the other prerequisites, you should get the achivement(s) as you reach the evaluation screen.

Credits/Thanks

I wrote this guide. All screenshots and the gif are by me.

I got started on how to approach this challenge using this speedrun by jimmy. So some routing/discoveries goes to the Steamworld Dig Speedrunning community.

Thanks to all the people who made this game at Image&Form.


And thank you! Hopefully you got the achievement as well!

[Muammer93]

It's impossible for me. Thanks anyways.

[𝙈𝙊𝙊𝙉𝘽𝙇𝘼𝘿𝙀]

Здравствуйте. У меня есть файл сохранения, который можно использовать для получения этого достижения. Напишите мне, если он вам нужен.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello. I have a save file that can be used to get this achievement. Write me if you need it.

[onlyonebanjo]

Thank you for this! I just got it in 2:14. I beat it at like 2:07 but only had 19,900 gold which was a really dumb thing I overlooked, but luckily got it the second time :)

[ELED3L]

time trial can be done without trick jumps or dinamit jumps, because i got 2 hours and a few mins without them, with a bunch of unnecessary and nooby backtracking

so if you played the game once, i think you wont have problems, the most important tip from the guide is to get to vectron as fast as possible

you should only practice that trick jump if you are going for a competitive speedrun

[Pengukeks]

Part1
My special corner jump xp
There IS a difference between just tapping the jump button & holding the jump button
I didn't know that on my first playthrough&speedrun
Took me a few minutes to get used to holding after only tapping all this time
It's important for the jump from the floor to even get to the first corner (as seen in guide gif)

Once u'r on the wall u need to start the first tap-jump on the lowest of the 3 wall blocks; with the bottom pixel of your lowest foot being a little more than half way down that lowest block (can slide down to it). There is not too much tolerance, so be aware of where you jumped off exactly and then adjust up or down depending on if u hit the ceiling or didn't make it high enough.
Maybe pause the guides gif for a more precise point but as u can see the groove is above the first half of that block, so definitely below it: https://i.imgur.com/WE1ypBS.png

[Pengukeks]

Part2
Then u do the hold-jump without sliding (during all this time u hold the movement button towards that wall) and only instantly after the hold-jump u press the opposite way movement button and of course back to the wall.

To practice u can even do it on ur speedrun save and just alt+f4 once u got the feeling for it&also alt+f4 if u fail too much on ur "real" try.


U CAN do the corner with only 1 hold-jump on only 2 wall blocks but I had more consistent results with the tap-into-hold method; maybe it's just missing practice. Here ur lower foot needs to pass the dark crack in the 2nd block: https://i.imgur.com/9Sel2uX.png

[samfizz]

Thank you! After one casual/achievement-hunting playthrough, I followed along and was able to get Master Prospector first try. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551359928

I cut it a little close with the orb count, haha.

[Pompan]

It worked really well!
2h 3 min and 178 orbs on second try :)

[Shinigami]

I tried wall jump and it didn't work, not once. In the best case I hit the ceiling or my jump is nowhere nearly high enough. In the worst case I don't jump at all.

On the other hand, using dynamite works like a charm every time and I get to fly VERY high.

I'd recommend using dynamite after getting some health upgrades.

[Nykuos]

really good guide, thanks ^^